Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
chemistry. It is interesting to notice that, when the relevance of the praxis of science
is considered, our ontological pluralism is not far from the
practical realism
defended by Rein Vihalemm (
2003
,
2005
,
2011
) in several works: even if there is
an external, noumenal world, the different scientific ontologies are captured by the
conceptual schemes presupposed by those theories accepted due to their pragmatic
virtues.
2
Summing up, although the argument developed by Manafu in his article has no
logical fissures, neither of the two situations considered by the author turns out to be
a serious obstacle to defend the ontological autonomy of the chemical world on the
basis of our ontological pluralist perspective.
3.5 The Continuity Between Chemistry and Physics
In a paper devoted to discussing the problem of the existence of the orbitals,
3
we speak
of a
conceptual breakdown
or
conceptual discontinuity
between molecular chemistry
and quantummechanics: “
Whereas in quantum mechanics
is a non
-
referring
term
,
in molecular chemistry orbitals exist as spatial regions on the basis of which the
shape of the local and individual molecules can be explained
” (Labarca and Lombardi
2010a
, p. 155). In that paper we stress that, in the last decades, many authors have
recognized the conceptual discontinuity between the two theories (Woolley
1978
;
Primas
1983
,
1998
;Amann
1992
). More recently, Hinne Hettema (
2012
,p.368)talks
about the “
ontological discontinuity
” between the terms of chemistry and those of
physics: certain terms used both in chemistry and in physics seem to refer to different
items in the two disciplines. According to this author, such discontinuity is “
one of the
central problems in the philosophy of chemistry
,
around which many other problems
,
such as that of reduction
,
revolve
.” (Hettema
2012
,p.368).
Peter Mulder (
2010
,
2011
) also admits that the term
orbital
'
'
'
orbital
'
has two different
scientific meanings. On the one hand, “[t]
he term
applies to one
-
electron
wave functions in general
,
of which hydrogenic orbitals are merely a subset
”
(Mulder
2010
, p. 178). However, he also acknowledges the use of the term to
denote a region of high electronic density: “
the point should be clear that the
understanding of orbitals as regions of electron density is pervasive in chemis-
try
.” (Mulder
2011
, p. 31). Nevertheless, Mulder disagrees with us with respect to
orbital
'
'
2
This does not imply the agreement with Vihalemm
s defense of Niiniluoto
s(
1999
) critical
'
'
scientific realism (for a criticism of Niiniluoto
s position, see Lombardi and P´rez Ransanz
2012
,
'
Chapter 2).
3
Here I will not discuss the particular issue of the existence of orbitals, since the detailed treatment
of the problem is beyond the limits of this paper and will be treated in a future work (for a
discussion of this topic, see Scerri
2000
,
2001
,
2002
).
